Advertisements of merchandise and services via the electronic medium of television and radio are well known commercial activities. Some of these advertisements solicit a telephone response in order to facilitate delivery of merchandise and payment for same. Upon witnessing a particular advertisement, an interested person dials a telephone number as given in the advertisement, to speak with a merchandising agent. The merchandising agent is located at some convenient place for this purpose and in the first instant was provided with a telephone having a directory number as given in the advertisement. Thus, soon after an occurrence of the advertisement, a great many telephone calls may be directed to the merchandising agent. As the merchandising agent and a potential customer are in telephone conversation, subsequent telephone calls from other potential customers are not completed. Actually, many potential customers become discouraged with repeated attempts to reach the merchandising agent. Furthermore, the intially aroused impulse to purchase deteriorates with time, such that some potential purchasers never make more than one attempt to complete a telephone call to the merchandising agent. Consequently, a very significant amount of business is lost. Attempts to reduce the amount of lost business includes the employ of more merchandising agents along with an automatic call distribution system so that many potential customers are served at the same time. However, as the rate at which calls occur is highest just after the occurrence of the advertisement, employment of sufficient agents and telephones to respond to this peak calling rate results in a high proportion of idle agents during intervals between airing occurrences of the advertisement. An advantageous reduction in the number of employed agents can be achieved by providing the telephone system with a call waiting feature. With the call waiting feature, when an agent is not immediately available, the caller is exposed to further information or entertainment intended to urge the potential customer to remain active in the telephone call for a period long enough for one of the agents to become available to receive the call. Nevertheless, there remains a balancing problem in regard to optimizing the business activity so the least amount of operating expenses per unit volume of sales is achieved.
An alternate solution lies in having a plurality of advertisements which direct the potential purchasers to the same group of merchandising agents. In such an arrangement, the workload of the agents may be more randomly distributed and their time hence more efficiently utilized. However, this incurs a major disadvantage in that the merchandising agent must query the potential customer as to which of the various products the caller is interested in. The agent's function is therefore more complicated and probability of error is increased. Errors frequently result in wrong shipments and subsequent corrective costs which may nullify any initial cost saving.